Some progress

Handbag is done. Don't know if its just the fabric but it looks a bit odd... And that white so called piping is just horrible, but it is my first attempt at something like that. Didn't really know how to get that one nice and not so twisted. But there you go. First proper handbag done, with zipped inner pocket and nice zip across the top as well.

And this is a bit of progress on my mums bead spread. One star done, two more to go

I've also been for my first 'consultation' with a client..... We did decide on what kind of pattern and colours the girls wanted for their quilts. Next Tuesday we are going to look for fabric and then its just for me to get started! I got an additional request to make a a table runner like the one I made for our table but slightly longer. So from now on  I will be quite busy me thinks!

Lookie!

There is a give away button on the sidebar, if you like to enter click on it and you'll come to Sweet Bee Buzzings where Bethany is having a give away of very nice sewing AND  knitting stuff.

Leaves, apples and sunshine

Yes it was a perfect day to rake up some leaves and take our huge surplus of apples to the tip. Our biggest apple tree has gone nuts this year and is still half full of apples and still we took the car full of the fallen ones to the tip today. But am feeling all he hard work now tonight. Still, it feels good to have it done since they are predicting snow tomorrow and later on in the week.

Not much sewing going on. But I finished the handbag we started on the course pictures later on. Got to get cracking on all my other projects. My mum wants a bead spread, thankfully only for a single bed but still. But that one will be fun to do.

Old times...

I've been sussing out how to get my archived posts to show in this fancy year by year list I've seen other people have and finally figured it out! So now you can all read about me from my early days in blogging. Can't believe though I've been blogging since 2002!

I have actually been reading a few of my old posts and are quite gobbsmacked  about how I wrote then and how I write now. I was much funnier before! Now I just feel old and boring when writing.... sigh

I must be crazy

I've been asked to make two big quilts. I don't know yet how big she wants me to make them but it seems it will be blanket size. I said they cost a lot in material and that I would take an amount for making them but it wasn't a problem. Money is not an issue......

You might wonder if I agreed to make them.

I did.

On a roll again!

I couldn't stop myself so I made 2 more smaller pillowcases.

Got one more small square one to do but that will have to wait until tomorrow. I want to make one with circles but I got to find the little tutorial for them again in my blogroll!

New look

I was getting tired of the pillows we have in the sofa so i fiddled a bit and came up with these

They are not exactly the same due to a cutting error on my part but I like them all the same. Now I just have to come up with something to match for my 3 smaller pillows. I like this!

To bag or not to bag

Today was my quilting course and we did sew a bit more of the handbag. But now when we are going to join the pieces together I think the pattern is a bit silly thinking about how I have been seeing and reading about how to do other handbags. I might actually try and do it differently and if it doesn't work out I'll rip it and do it like the pattern says.

It was the last time of my quilting course as well for this time. We might start up again in November if there are enough people interested . At the moment it is only Mette and me that are interested to continue. A course for two seems a bit silly to me so hopefully there will be others as well. If you are a group you get to see lots of other projects as well and get inspired to do something new.

Now I am off to bed, got an early start tomorrow and a long shift. But it is only a week left now until we go to England and London for a long weekend!

Weekend over! Yay!

Yes I have worked this weekend but it wasn't too bad since I got to work with one of  my favorite persons to work with! It does go so much quicker if you can have a laugh or two while working doesn't it?

I have also been for a quick walk which went very well, not feeling so fatigued like I have been doing the last couple of weeks after walks and general work. The cough seems to be getting better even though it is a bit stubborn yet but much better then last week.

I haven't been sewing much at home, haven't had time or energy for it. I am going to do some buttonholes on the bag we are making at the course though so it is ready for the next step. Will show you it when I have put the pocket lids on so you can see a bit better what I am doing. It is quite a square bag but we likes is!

I also have an idea for how to finish off our new bedspread I am doing. I will use the lighter shades of brown and yellow as fillers and have a a striped border around the center piece. Just got some measurements to figure out in inches instead of cm.... You know these inches are troublesome sometimes when you are used to cm!

October

So today is first of October. It was -5 this morning and now everything has gone in the garden. I will clear it out this weekend after work. All my lovely dahlias went yesterday so they will be dug out of of the ground tomorrow. Got to remember to mark them so I know which colour they are for next year.
The last water butt can be emptied as well, there was a thin sheet of ice on it this morning when I had a look.

I like autumn in general but at the moment I'm a bit meh about everything it seems. I think it has to do with work and that I don't enjoy it as much as I did before. I even had a look at what others jobs are available this morning and there weren't much there that I could apply for. But I will probably send out letters asking for vacancies in places I would like to work. I got to do something different!

Wish me luck!

Cute as a button!

I had to try this one out and look! It is soooo cute I just want to snuggle it!

It's only about 9x4 cm big and got a very nice lining. I can see these made as Christmas presents!

I had to make it this small because my zipper was very short.. But glad I did. It is absolutely doable even though slightly fiddly when doing the corners.

I'm in love with it....!

Meh....

Do you have days when you really really REALLY are tired of your job? Well today was my turn to absolutely hate my job and wonder why I keep at it. First of all the nice flower section I had made before the weekend with the outdoor plants had been messed with during the weekend and looked really really pathetic all because the buckets with rose bouquet  were obscuring some fresh herbs! So instead of moving the buckets over a bit they decided to wreck the whole set up. I was really upset and irritated when I understood why they had done it. It was just a TAD overkill in my opinion! The day just really went downhill from there and got topped off with a super idiot of a customer throwing a tantrum because he wasn't allowed to mix different plastic bags for the super saver special offer we had on ONE kind of bags. He literately threw the boxes at me and demanded a refund indicating I was stupid when mentioning that it was just the one brand of plastic bags that were in the offer. With the new Bosses rules we have to deal with it with a smile and say yes please and just take the abuse.
It is sometimes a very hard pill to swallow but I did it with a fake smile and said yes of course I'll refund these for you. Thinking all the time you idiot you idiot....

Joy of joys working in a supermarket sometimes.

Couldn't help myself

Look what I've found at the market today!

Lovely full width 50cm pieces of fabric, 4 for a 100 kr is a bargain I can tell you. I just love the cute chickens and pigs. And I also go to know about a new fabric shop quite close by as well. Will go there one day and have a look.
It was very cold walking around the market but I got some lovely cheese, home made bread, a new soft shell coat, lovely big carrots and beetroot grown locally and I got to pick a Christmas present! Which I will have forgotten about in December anyway. Now I am going to continue hand quilt that monster of a bedspread I am making for a friend. I'll just hand quilt the middle section since it wouldn't fit in my machine to do it all so I'll do the outer borders with my sewing machine or I might actually do some hand quilting there as well. I like how it is looking at the moment. It's nothing special, just tracing the flowers in the print but I like the look of it all the same.

Local Market

We are going to a local market today. It is held in a little village just outside Borlänge called Solvarbo. I didn't think the weather would improve but it is looking a bit hopeful this morning that we at least wont have any rain. It is a very good little market with all sorts of stalls and not the usual suspects(socks,clothes and sweets) And they usually have a very good craft section where people sell what they've made.

Fingers crossed it wont rain!

Progress

Hmmm, I do not trust the weathermen any more. They said rain and lousy weather for today and nice for tomorrow but now it seems it is okish and warm today and really rainy and horrible tomorrow! So I went out in the garden today and did a bit of tidying up. I turned two veg plots over as well. It is weirdly satisfying doing that and getting rid of the weeds and mulling in some compost. Preparing for next year is always fun. Started to plan what we are going to grow next year as well.

My mum came by and kept on asking what she could do so I made her plant all the tulip bulbs I bought and rake up all the apples from the lawn and still she kept on asking what she could do next! She has a lot more energy then me and she just turned 70! Well usually I do have energy as well but this cough bug I got in Stockholm wont leave me alone. I had to quit after digging two plots simply because I was too tired, that is unheard of for me! Well I took the hint and left mum outside looking for some planks in the shed by herself and went in to take care of the swedes and beans I picked. When mum left I went upstairs and started sewing instead since gardening seemed to be out of the question.

And this is how far the bedspread has come for now.

But now I'm in a bit of a pickle. You see the fabric came from a fat quarter stack and I've almost used up all the lovely dark brown pieces and still got quite a wide border to do around the center piece so what do I do?

It is the weekend it is the weekend it is the weekend!

Well it is weekend for me at least. I do have a lovely schedule every other week when I only need to work Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. To top it off  they have promised crap weather tomorrow but good for the rest of the weekend so can do lots of sewing tomorrow and do the gardening the others days when Jamie can help me!

It is almost too perfect.....

In other news
I've left the Christmas tree rugs for a while and am making good progress on our new bedspread. Only thing is that I wont have enough dark brow fabric to finish it off. I will have to make inquiries to the shop in England where I bought the fat quarter stack and see if they still have some of them in stock and buy a few yards of it. Since it being my birthday soon I might get something else as well since the postage is a flatrate once you get over a certain amount of gods purchased which I'm quite sure I will do quite quickly...
Hmm so what will I get...

Sorted!

Thank Gods for teachers who will reassure you that No it isn't a total disaster and Just do like this and it will be fine. The nice but horribly bubbly Christmas rug is now quilted and looking very... flat actually. The other one will just stay as it is with a nice trimming after I quilt it. No point in getting in a mess about the colours, just live with them and remember for the next time you do a similar pattern what colours and patterns worked and which ones didn't. Contrast people, think contrast!

It was all frosty this morning. It seems most of my flowers coped with this first frost since it was just a light one. I haven't had time to look at my vegetables but presumably my squash has gone straight away being very fussy about temperatures . The cabbages should cope slightly better. I'll have a proper look tomorrow when it is lighter. It was already getting dark when I got home from work this evening. There is no doubt, autumn is about to come around.

Not. Pleased. At. All !

Remember I said I was doing some Christmas tree rugs? Well I am and they are not coming out like I want them to! The first one looks really nice colour wise but is so wonky  I really don't know what to do with it!

 Just look at that center star all bubbly and not AT ALL FLAT!

The other one really doesn't work because of the fabrics I chose but it is a perfectly flat and nice looking center star!

Sigh....

At least the table runner came out looking really really good after the quilting and binding was put on.

I think I will go to Falun tomorrow and show Marina what has happened to the rugs and maybe she will know how to rescue the nice one at least. I am almost crying because of the spoilt fabrics! I suppose if worse came to worse I could always rip it and start over changing some of the fabrics but that would be the very last option since it is cut on the bias.. I can see it now, an even worse wonky star...

Christmas...?

I've been playing around with a pattern I saw at the course last week. This is how it ended up. It needs quilting and binding still but it looks pretty already.

It should have been lovely!

But it was just cough cough cough all weekend. We were set for a lovely weekend away in Stockholm with Jamie and Fredrik running the Stockholm half marathon while me and Rosie cheering them on. We went down on Friday morning and by Friday evening I had a fever and really poorly stomach so went to the hotel early after a pub dinner and just got in bed and tried not to shiver too much. I had to stay in while they went out for the race. But after a nap I went out to the halfway marker and cheered them on for a bit. It was a lovely warm day and I didn't need to walk that far since the hotel was along the race route. Felt better that evening so we had a lovely late dinner at the hotel restaurant . Yesterday I really thought I was doing better but after half the day I wished for an earlier train to get back home but we took it easy so it wasn't too bad in the end. I phoned in sick this morning though since the cough is getting worse just hope it will get better soon. My new boss seems to have got the same bug since he was going home when I got hold of him this morning.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from the race. First is Fredrik going out on the second half of the race.

The second one is of Jamie (in the lime green vest) coming round from the second half towards the finish. He liked the picture because of all the different face expressions on the other runners.